India’s Democracy and Development is in its Districts

YouthPOWER: For the first time, fragmented national data has been consolidated into clear, district-level dashboards

Note: Eighty-five percent of our people continue to live in the district of their birth. That is why my column in The Hindu below makes the case that India’s democracy and development must be rebuilt from its districts.

This is exactly what YouthPOWER, our flagship initiative at the Future of India Foundation, seeks to do. Drawing on my experience with India’s youth and politics - and a deep desire to see India and her young people succeed - I have spent the better part of the past year shepherding this initiative to fruition. It gives me great joy to share that YouthPOWER is now live nationally. This has been a collective effort, made possible by many who generously donated their time and expertise - for which I am deeply grateful.

YouthPOWER is a structural intervention in how India understands and addresses its demographic and democratic future. For the first time, fragmented national data has been consolidated into clear, district-level dashboards that:

• Track youth opportunity across education, skilling, employment, and the economy

• Link outcomes to the responsibility of elected representatives

• Strengthen both civic engagement and democratic accountability

We are now partnering with MPs to pilot this model and create reusable, public-access knowledge products - so that anyone, whether an elected representative, NGO, or young person, can engage in their own district and participate in nation-building.

Explore here: youthpower.in. See a 30-second video demo

PS. If this resonates with you, do share this with your friends and colleagues

Visit: youthpower.in

India’s Democracy and Development Is in Its Districts

Published in The Hindu

Across the world, public life feels increasingly fragmented and polarized, even as technological, ecological, and demographic upheavals gather pace. India’s greatest opportunity - and challenge - in this moment lies with its youth. With 65% of the population under the age of 35, an aging global population, and profound changes in the nature of work, the question before us is stark: can India’s leaders ensure that our young people are mainstreamed economically and democratically?

Doing so will require shifting our gaze from metropolitan hubs to the districts where most Indians actually live. Nearly 85% of Indians remain in the district of their birth, yet cities that cover just 3% of the country’s land account for over 60% of GDP. This concentration of growth - both social and geographic - has left much of the nation’s talent under-utilised.

Even as corporate profits have risen to record highs, wages have stagnated. That has dampened domestic consumption - the main pillar of our economy - because purchasing power remains concentrated among a narrow segment. In a global order marked by volatility, India’s next wave of growth cannot rely on exports or elite consumption alone. While governments have tried to put more money in people’s hands, mass youth opportunity needs broad-based participation in production, consumption, and innovation.

Such participation cannot be engineered only from above. A central problem with India’s governance is its deep centralisation. Successive policy paradigms have prioritised administrative efficiency, technocratic schemes, and digital service delivery - all important - but their top-down nature has narrowed political agency at the local level. Elected representatives, meant to act as conduits between citizen aspirations and state capacity, have been reduced to mediators of individual entitlements rather than shapers of developmental direction and conveners of public good.

This model is showing strain. Electoral politics has increasingly pivoted to welfare through cash transfers in the absence of meaningful employment. But this approach is yielding diminishing returns as promises multiply while structural transformation remains elusive. Beneath the surface, there is growing political fatigue - among citizens and representatives - with a system that is struggling to deliver opportunity and ownership. This fatigue is most evident among young people, for whom the promise of mobility collides with the reality of limited opportunity.

To truly transform our country, we must start from where Indian youth actually live - its districts. Administratively, India has long been district-led but this dominance of bureaucracy means that citizens experience the state primarily as subjects of delivery, not civic participants. To reengage our youth and create opportunity, we must reclaim the district as a democratic commons rather than just an administrative unit.

If districts were placed at the centre of our civic imagination, opaque national schemes could be disaggregated, silos broken, and outcomes tracked locally. This would make accountability tangible, showing where districts are creating opportunity for youth and where urgent course correction is needed. It would also bring into focus the stark disparities in investment, opportunity, and outcomes across districts, enabling more equitable allocation of resources.

This vision builds on India’s democratic structure. Districts already anchor administration, and Members of Parliament chair committees overseeing central schemes. Linking outcomes more directly to MPs’ constituencies would bring governance closer to people, incentivise locally tailored solutions, and deepen civic engagement. Measurement and accountability cannot by themselves overcome deficits of capacity or political will, but they can clarify problems, surface local innovations, and create transparency. Done well, they can build a constituency for reform by connecting elected representatives, civil society, and private actors around shared developmental priorities.

Shared Responsibility for Inclusive Growth

This transformation also demands visible and meaningful participation from India’s top 10% - political leaders, corporate executives, and intellectuals. While many profess a commitment to inclusion, translating principle into practice requires specific, targeted interventions.

A district-first civic framework provides a way to do just that. It offers a tangible route for elites to translate good intentions into local action. It reclaims governance as a deeply democratic, grounded process: redistributing power to communities, fostering collective accountability, and bridging the persistent gap between policy design and lived impact.

India’s future will not be determined only by economic indicators, but by whether its democracy is responsive to the needs of youth outside urban and elite centres. We already have a district-first bureaucracy; what we need now is a district-first democracy. A district-first approach offers a framework to rebuild that engagement - by reconnecting local political leadership with development outcomes, and placing districts at the heart of both democratic participation and economic progress. Most importantly, this framework of local collaboration offers a chance to build tangible common ground rooted in a shared love for our country, rather than being drawn into performative or polarising partisanship.

By focusing on India’s districts, we can revive both national development and the fundamental principles of democratic engagement. If we fail to reimagine districts as democratic spaces, we risk not only wasting our demographic dividend but hollowing out democracy itself